What man really needs is discovered only in Christ. It is then that he realizes that he is thirsty because God, more profoundly and in a way unthinkable to man, is thirsty for him. When we mentioned at the beginning that God comes to allow man to live his own religiosity, this does not mean that Christ causes man to remain simply a natural being. Christ’s incarnation, instead, allows man to be in relation with the source without possessing it. Christology, for Giussani, is the truth of philosophy, not because Christ submits himself to the ontological structure of being, but, more fundamentally, because his person illumines the meaning of man and of the dual nature of being. While there is a sense in which faith can be understood naturally, with Augustine, as knowledge through a witness, the difference between recognition of the mystery and the affirmation of Christ is that faith, says Giussani, “is when something is said to you by a Thou, by God’s Mystery, as the book of Wisdom writes: ‘God has created man for happiness.’ This is faith because it is Another who speaks.” full text (pdf).

The Summer 2010 Communio treats the theme of “The Nature of Experience.” The issue publishes a collection of the papers presented at the conference by the same name that took place at the Pontifical John Paul II Institute in Washington, DC in December 2009.

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Current Issue: Liturgy and Culture (Winter 2012)

Communio, a journal of Catholic theology and culture, was founded in 1972 by Hans Urs von Balthasar, Joseph Ratzinger, Henri de Lubac, and Jean Danielou, among others.
The journal is present in 16 countries and languages. The English-language edition of Communio is located in Washington, D.C. and is published quarterly.